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Spirituality, Health and Coping: Aspects of Well-Being

This project
involves an interdisciplinary team of researchers from Wilkinson College, Crean
School of Health and Life Sciences, Schmid College, and the George L. Argyros School of Business and Economics. A number of factors can
influence person’s health and well-being. These can include the physical
geography or space where a person lives, their degree of spirituality and faith
and the nature of the social connections. The connection between
spirituality/religion and health is a growing area of research.

As individuals we all encounter crisis at some
point. The social networks that people have with one another (both in person
and online), mediate the ability to cope and deal with crisis. In essence, social networks, religion
spirituality offer support to an individual as they face life’s challenges. Our
research team has created an interdisciplinary framework to examine the
connections between spirituality, health and individual well-being. We believe
that spirituality and social networks serve as a positive influence on a
person’s well-being. As a part of this research have designed and will
administer a survey addressing the degree of a person’s spirituality, the
nature of their social connectedness and the quality of their health. This survey is done in collaboration and
support from the leadership from Wilkinson College.

Members

Research projects

Grants/funding

Student projects

Dr. Christopher Bader, Sociology, Wilkinson College & Economics, George L. Argyros School of Business and EconomicsChristopher Bader is a Professor of Sociology, a board member of IRES and a board member of ASREC. He was principal
investigator of the first two waves of the Baylor Religion Survey, a
nationwide survey of US religious beliefs, and is Associate Director of
the Association of Religion Data Archives (ARDA), an online archive of
religion survey data funded by the Templeton Foundation and Lilly
Foundation and supported by Penn State University and Chapman
University. To date, he has published 27 articles in journals in the
fields of sociology, deviance, criminology, the sociology of religion
and education. His first two books America's Four Gods from Oxford
University Press and Paranormal America: Ghost Encounters, UFO
Sightings, Bigfoot Hunts, and Other Curiosities in Religion and Culture
from NYU Press appeared in October, 2010. He currently has several
articles and two books in progress.Religion, Self Control, and Substance UseCountervailing Forces: Religiosity and Paranormal Belief in Italy

Dr. Lisa Sparks, Communication Studies, Wilkinson College & Health and Strategic Communications, Crean School of Health and Life SciencesLisa Sparks is the Director of Graduate Studies for the M.S. in Health
and Strategic Communication, as well as Foster and Mary McGaw endowed
Professor in Behavioral Sciences. Dr. Sparks also serves as a full
member of the Chao Family/NCI Designated Comprehensive Cancer Center at
the University of California, Irvine in the School of Medicine (SOM) in
the Division of Population Sciences, and has a faculty appointment in
the Program in Public Health (PHP), College of Health Sciences (COHS).
Prior to joining Chapman in 2006, Dr. Sparks occupied positions at
George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, where she served as
Director of Graduate Programs and General Education Courses, affiliated
faculty with the National Center for Biodefense and Infectious Diseases
and the Center for Social Science Research, and the University of Texas
at San Antonio, positions she held until she joined Chapman. A highly
regarded teacher-scholar whose published work spans more than 100
research articles and scholarly book chapters, Dr. Sparks is the author
and editor of more than 10 books in the areas of communication, health,
and aging with a distinct focus on cancer communication science.Patient and Provider InteractionEMCI Think Tank: Mental Heathcare Media BlueprintHealth Communication in the 21st Century

Dr. Andrea Molle, Wilkinson CollegeAndrea Molle is an associate researcher in Sociology and Political
Science at Chapman University. Prior to
coming to Chapman, he was Post-doc fellow at Baylor University. From
November 2006 to November 2008, he conducted anthropological researches
on new religions in Japan working at the Nanzan Institute for Religion
and Culture (Nagoya) under the JSPS programme. He is also Associate
Researcher with the Italian School for East Asian Studies in Kyoto.
Current projects at Chapman focus on computational social science,
non-Christian religions and spiritualties, religious markets.
He has published a book on new religions (in Italian) and several
articles in journals in the fields of sociology and anthropology.Countervailing Forces: Religiosity and Paranormal Belief in Italy

Dr. Sheila L. Steinberg, Sociology, Wilkinson CollegeDr. Steinberg is a visiting Professor of Sociology at Chapman University and
Director of Community Research for the California
Center for Rural Policy. Steinberg
taught and conducted research at Humboldt State University for 11 years. She
completed her bachelor's at the University of California, Santa Barbara; her
master's at the University of California, Berkeley; and her doctorate at The
Pennsylvania State University. Her research interests include community, sociospatial research, applied
sociology, research methods, health inequalities, ethnic
communities, poverty, policy and environmental sociology. She has conducted
field research in Nepal, Guatemala, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and California. The theme throughout this research has been the examination of people and
their relationship to space and place. Recently, she has co-authored a chapter
on this topic entitled "Geospatial Analysis Technology and Social Science
Research." in the Handbook of Emergent Technologies, Sharlene
Hesse-Biber, Editor, Oxford University Press 2011. Another recent publication
is a book chapter entitled, "Global Women Superheroes: Place, Space and
Action," in Chapter in: Women's Encounter with Globalization. Samir
Dasgupta, R. Driskell, N. Yeates and Y. Braun (Eds.), London: Front Page
Publishers 2010.

Exploring the connection between spirituality, coping social networks and health. We want to examine how individuals’ health and well-being is tied to spirituality, networks and their ability to cope.

Templeton Foundation, and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation are possibilities.

We plan to integrate students from a variety of disciplines into the research coding and analysis portion of this project and to include them in the writing of research papers and conference presentations.